Common characteristics of student outcome standards, by accrediting agency

Common characteristics

HLC

MSCHE

WSCUC

ACCJC

NEASC

SACSCOC

NWCCU

Requires focus on specific outcomes

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

Requires demographic disaggregation

✓

✓

Includes success after graduation

✓

✓

✓

✓

Requires goal setting

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

Requires using quantitative outcomes data to make improvements

✓

✓

✓

✓

Benchmarks against peers

✓

✓

Requires using student outcomes to evaluate admissions process

✓

Notes: The New England Association of Schools and Colleges makes demographic disaggregation optional in its Standard 8.1. MSCHE benchmarks against an institution's peers at the mid-point review, a process that was not evaluated for this report.

Source: See Appendix. For the accreditor agencies’ complete titles, see Table 1 in Antoinette Flores, “How College Accreditors Miss the Mark on Student Outcomes” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2018), available at https://www.americanprogress.org/?p=449937.